11:43 – We drove out to Home Depot yesterday and picked up a steel shelving unit, which we’ll dedicate to food storage. We decided to get the 4-foot wide one rather than the 5-footer to leave more clearance for Barbara to get the lawnmower, lawn vacuum, wheelbarrow, and other farming gear in and out. Even the smaller unit provides considerable storage space, with 40 square feet of shelving in a unit 6’6″ tall. That’s about two cubic yards of storage space, enough for at least a full person-year of stored food.
USPS has struck again. I just shipped a kit to Canada, and they’ve changed their Click-N-Ship page. Until recently, there was an empty field where one could enter the Canadian postal code manually, in the form X9X 9X9. That’s no longer an option. This morning, I found that empty field had been replaced by a drop-down list, as had the field for city name. I was shipping the kit to Ottawa, Ontario. So I chose Ontario from a drop-down list, followed by Ottawa from another drop-down list. But when I got to the postal code field, my only options were to choose the first three characters, which in this case were K2A. There was nowhere to enter the remaining three characters. I figured that the USPS software would fill out the missing three characters, but when I printed the label they were still missing. The last line was “K2A Ottawa Ontario”. I wasn’t sure that was sufficient, so I manually printed the full postal code beneath the CANADA line.
I know the USPS can be picky on international. I sent a letter to London several years ago and wrote “UK” at the bottom and they kicked it back and said I needed to spell out the full country name. Makes sense. I wouldn’t want it going to London, Ukraine, or London, Uzbekistan. With the street name, city of London, and United Kingdom formatted postal code you’d think they could exercise some common sense. At worst, let the postal service in the United Kingdom reject the letter back to me if the address didn’t exist in the United Kingdom. Foreign post offices don’t have a problem with international mail addressed to the United States saying simply “USA” at the bottom. It’s that block-headedness that make it a true American industry.
It’s deliberate block-headedness from what I have experienced, no other explanation. They’re just being dicks.
Got a new primary-care setup on tap now at the much closer VA clinic in Burlap, only thirty miles away instead of 130; also got a combined tetanus/whooping cough shot, which they told me we’re supposed to get every ten years. Either that or they just put a RFID chip in my left bicep and I’m on their radar now 7×24.
As usual, fast and efficient service, and couldn’t do enough for me. All my signs are good but I’ll have more appointments coming up for other stuff, including probable surgery on my right foot.
Mrs. OFD is finally out of their wonderful week in the northern Kalifornia beach wilderness where there was no internet or phone, apparently, and is in San Leandro this week for her gig, SF Bay area. Princess is spending it with more of her friends in Santa Barbara, courtesy of mom’s paycheck again, and a flight back up this way later, ditto. No word on whether she has a job for the summuh yet, but she’s been told that another Tour of the Continent is out this time. As it is she’s gonna spend her junior year in Leipzig, looks like. Where they have an annual Bach festival; she has a double major in music and languages and plays piano, organ, guitar, and has now apparently learned the harp to the level that she does concerts and recitals up there. How this will all translate into mucho dinero is anybody’s guess, but what the hell, nothing else is a guarantee anymore, either, except what, petroleum engineering?
Only one more episode to go for Season Two of “Vikings” tonight; if I’d been in charge back then, Ragnar, Rollo, Floki, et. al. would be hanging from gibbets on whichever English beach was their favorite landing. The rest of them would be either killed or sent into slavery to the Turks and Moors. Certain of the women would be assigned to my top officers and the children would be raised as prototype Jesuits.
OFD, you can kill RFID chips with microwaves. Disable the safety interlock, stick your arm in the microwave, and set the time for … oh, seven minutes to make sure you cook the chip.
Either that or they just put a RFID chip in my left bicep and I’m on their radar now 7×24.
Stay out of Wal*Mart, you will now have to pay to get yourself out of there.
“No word on whether she has a job for the summuh yet, but she’s been told that another Tour of the Continent is out this time.”
Send her down here and I’ll show her around Oz… 🙂
I think I’ll just take my chances and stay outta the microwave and Wall-Mutt for now. Doc told me the shot would be painful and that I’d have some pain after, but zero on both counts so fah.
“Send her down here…”
I’ll ask her if she’s ever interested in seeing Oz for a nice change from Old Europe; but OTOH, I wouldn’t inflict that on ya, Greg; not even on a heretic Methodist. Believe me, you would RUE the day. And IIRC, she’s got both height and weight on ya and is as strong as an ox.
Sigh. Why do government agencies make one feel so incompetent?
I was just scheduling my appointment to get my background check and fingerprints from a trusted authority: family and human services over in Rosenberg. No way am I heading across the river into Houston to get this done. I’ve actually been in this place before helping a friend out, they attempt to remove your soul the minute you darken their door. And, I have to get this done by September 30 in order to keep my Professional Engineers license. Along with all of my other yearly requirements such as fourteen hours of continuing education and one hour of ethics (oh crap, forgot about that, gotta get that done also).
So anyway, I am filling out screen after screen of info that just about any identity hacker would like to have. I guess I am proud that they are at least using HTTPS instead of HTTP. When I get to the payment screen, I notice that I put in 2997 instead of 2007 for my street address. So, I attempt to change it. Bad server, bad bad server! I end up killing the session and supposedly starting over. The system will not let me restart the process and has my chosen time blocked out. Lovely. I guess that I just show up and see what happens. What could go wrong?
I also just noted that I cannot pay with credit card or cash. I must bring a personal check or a money order for $41.95 plus $24.95 for a copy of my background record. Since they will not take my credit card plus a convenience fee on their site. Sigh. I thought USA money was legal tender for all debts, public and private, in the USA?
BTW, the Texas Board of Professional Engineers has assured us that our fingerprints will not be stored in any governmental system or records. Why do I have a problem believing them?
“Legal tender”, legally, means that if you tender cash, the creditor could not refuse it and later claim you had not offered to pay. As contrasted with, say, you offering a check. He could refuse that and then sue you for not attempting to pay what you owed him.
My last two (exactly the same for the same employer) background checks were also obscenely annoying and swamped me with paperwork, fingerprint cards, method of payment for same to the local PD a problem, etc., etc. Both entailed many months of hassle and inconvenience and expense to me and were both for naught. Probably a bullet dodged.
Now about to go through the FFL process.
Common sense? You expect the average American worker to be aware of international geography and what post codes look like in different countries?
I have had more than one package from the US sent to Swaziland (probably because the country abbreviation is SW). Amazingly enough, most things eventually arrived, having enjoyed their tour of the world.
One company (Intuit) determinedly sent our correspondence to Canada. I don’t remember why we needed physical paper from them, but we did. After many tries we finally got a reasonable human on their support line (another *long* adventure – they have terrible support), and this person had to hand-write an envelope and stuff the papers inside (which is how we saw “Canada” on the printed address). The person explained that the only countries on the support drop-down were the USA, Canada and (iirc) Mexico.
Sometimes the postal Fairy Godmother strikes. I will never forget an incident in 1979. I was living in North Royalton, OH, zipcode 44133. I received a letter addressed to me by name, which was all that was correct about the address. The street number and street name were both wrong, the city was Tulsa, the state was OK (close to OH, I guess), and the zipcode was 74133 rather than 44133.
And the letter was in fact for me. I didn’t think anything about it until later when I happened to look at the envelope. To this day I wonder how the hell the USPS found me.
They used to have events like that all the time; mail would get to the most minimal or obscure addresses. Not sure if this is still the case, but I’d guess not so much. People back then probably prided themselves on figuring it out; now either too lazy, indifferent or fearful of getting in some kind of trouble.
We’ve come a long way, baby!
I, too, have received one letter which was so badly misaddressed that it’s a wonder it found its way to me.
Balance that against the many letters I know were correctly addressed to me but misdelivered to others. I know about these because I used to get a lot of mail for my neighbors. I’d hand-deliver when I got them, and often be given my mail which “they’d been meaning to get to me but hadn’t had a chance”. (Including some time-sensitive items which I received too late to do any good. Thanks for nothing, asshole.) And add to those a lot of bills and other items which normally arrived regularly but sometimes not at all.
Overall, the rare amazing successes don’t make up for the all-too-routine delivery failures.
People back then probably prided themselves on figuring it out; now either too lazy, indifferent or fearful of getting in some kind of trouble.
They joined a union.
Yep, the fourth factor, which I’d forgotten.